


Goddammit, Kryptaria, or, Sherlock and John in Baltimore

by RembrandtsWife



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: American beer, Gen, Stealth Crossover, consumption of dubious edibles, local color
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-05
Updated: 2014-02-05
Packaged: 2018-01-11 05:30:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1169256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RembrandtsWife/pseuds/RembrandtsWife
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When in Bawlmer, hon, eat as the Romans do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Goddammit, Kryptaria, or, Sherlock and John in Baltimore

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kryptaria](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kryptaria/gifts).



> I saw Kryptaria's Tumblr post announcing the "Visiting the States" collection, and... this happened.

"I told you you should have ordered the crab cake and not the hard crabs."

John forked up a piece of his crab cake and popped it into his mouth. Sherlock continued to stare at his food with an expression on his face that more properly belonged on the face of a four-year-old presented with steamed broccoli.

"The crab cake is good. Not fishy, really. A bit melty. I think you'd like it." John cut off another bit with his fork and held it out to Sherlock. Yes, he might be six foot tall and a genius, but he really was a fussy toddler sometimes.

Sherlock looked with equal dismay from his pile of steamed hard crabs, served on plain brown butcher's paper, to the golden-yellow bit of fried cake on John's fork, back to his plate. "I might as well be asked to eat a *scorpion*," he pronounced. 

John sighed and ate the rejected bite of crab cake. "Well, yes, I suppose they are related. But surely people wouldn't be eating them--" he gestured around the picturesquely dingy little restaurant, which was fairly busy at the moment-- "if they weren't worth the trouble."

"Everything okay, guys?" The waitress, a tiny woman with short orange-red hair and tattoos swirling down her neck and arms, looked at John's half-eaten crabcake and Sherlock's untouched hard crabs and divined the problem. "You've never eaten a hard crab before, have ya?" 

Sherlock glared at her the way people glared at him when he reeled off embarrassing deductions. "It's not hard, hon, you just have to know how to do it," the waitress said, smiling. "Here, lemme show you--"

She took one of the eight-legged, red-armored monstrosities from in front of Sherlock and seized his knife, too. John stifled the giggles that threatened as Sherlock's face went into full-blown "OMG how could you?" mode, eyes and mouth turning into three equally round apertures of dismay. 

"First, you break off the claws." Even John winced at the snapping of the crab's two front legs, which she tossed back onto the table. 

"Then, ya gotta open up the belly. This here one's a male, so you just slip the knife under here--" She turned the beast over and deftly inserted Sherlock's knife under a disturbingly masculine-looking bit on its underside, then wrenched it back, literally gutting it. A strong aroma of cooked meat wafted up from the steaming innards.

"Now you can break it in half--" crack! "--and go after the meat inside the body. But you don't wanna eat this stuff--" She pointed at a grayish mass with the knife, then twisted it out and shook the knife clean. "Then when you're done with that, you use the mallet--" a small wooden mallet that had been presented along with the food, mystifying both men-- "to open up the claws and the backfins." She put down the eviscerated crab and the knife, now smeared with a yellowish substance, and smiled, wiping her hands on her apron.

"Thank you," said John, since Sherlock's jaw was now trembling.

The waitress scurried away to help someone else. John finished his first crab cake and looked at the other one, plump and golden. The chips were good, too. "Do you want this other crab cake? I'll try one of the monsters, there."

Sherlock's response was to seize the plate and John's fork both and slice off half the second crab cake at one strike. Sighing, John took charge of the already prepped hard crab and began poking at it with the knife. 

"You were the one who wanted to spend a holiday at the Chesapeake Ripper trial," he pointed out. He washed down the spicy crabmeat with his pale and chilly American beer. They made a surprisingly good combination. "What's the point of going on holiday in a whole other country if you don't try new things?"

He wiped his mouth--his lips were now burning from the spices--and smiled winningly. Sherlock paused in his devouring of the chips to scowl back.

"You sound like *my mother*."

"Well, I feel like your mother often enough." John snagged another crab and wondered if he could replicate the cleaning routine properly. "These actually taste pretty good. Just a lot of work for the meat. Easier to have the crab cake. Oh, I ought to take some pictures of these to show Mary. She'll never believe we ate this stuff."

"I can't believe you ate it, either." Sherlock emptied his glass and plucked the menu from behind the sugar bowl. "I'm getting the chocolate mousse pie--now. I hope there won't be any 'Old Bay seasoning' on that."

John surreptitiously snapped a picture of Sherlock on his phone, then took up the mallet again and went after another monster.


End file.
